The Vortex of Fancy and Fanaticism

How is it possible that man should have any
clear conceptions of natural truth, when his understanding is
constantly insulted with a thousand incongruous and non-existent
relations, such as ghosts, witches, and devils, which perpetually
disturb the imagination, and draw the rational faculties into the
vortex of fancy and fanaticism? and this will ever be the case so
long as superstition, or, which is the same thing, a religion
claiming a supernatural birth, shall spread its bloody and baneful
influence among intelligent beings.

 --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

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